AGROMIX - Transforming Landscapes through mixed farming and agroforestry
AGROMIX | Agroforestry in Switzerland
Rineke Dijkinga – developing new and healthy food products with agroforestry
Dirk van Apeldoorn explains WUR agroforestry experiment in Lelystad (NL)
AGROMIX | Co-design methods workshop for sustainable and resilient food systems
Piet Hermus - agroforestry to encourage social dialogue
Father and son share their story and aspirations of establishing a food forest in the Netherlands.
Researchers are discovering the benefits of combining forestry and agricultural activities.
‘Items in this section have limited availability due to supplier production issues,’ ‘Sorry, temporarily out of stock’ and ‘Sold out’ are all signs that became familiar as recent global upheavals exposed how precarious our food supply is.
The COVID-19 pandemic led to bare shelves in supermarkets as shipping routes were cut off. The war in Ukraine has affected the supply of essential grains.
But increased climate change stands to cause even greater disruption. Researchers say part of the solution to mitigating that risk is for farms to become more mixed through some combination of crop cultivation, livestock production and forestry, a move that would also make agriculture more sustainable.
For Dr Sara Burbi, assistant professor at Coventry University in the UK until December 2022 and now an independent researcher, COVID-19 was a wake-up call.
‘Suddenly, we experienced first-hand what happens when value chains are not resilient to shocks and what happens when globalisation, with all its intricacies, does not work anymore,’ she said. ‘We saw highly specialised farming systems fail when they over-relied on external inputs that they had no access to.’
Climate change, according to Burbi, could provide even bigger global shocks ranging from widespread crop failures to lower yields or damage from flooding. More sustainable agriculture is essential to ensure food supplies can withstand the impact of climate change and unexpected local, national and even global crises.
Il 19 settembre Arpav partecipa alla prima giornata di “Esperienze di fertilità del suolo e analisi dei terreni”, un’iniziativa formativa organizzata da Veneto Agricoltura nell’ambito del progetto AGROMIX. Il seminario è rivolto ai consulenti del settore agricolo che operano o intendono operare nella Misura 2 del Piano di Sviluppo Rurale “Servizi di consulenza, di sostituzione e di assistenza alla gestione delle aziende agricole”.
La giornata si focalizza sulle caratteristiche dei suoli in funzione della loro storia pedologica, sulla loro valutazione e valorizzazione agronomica, sull’interpretazione e utilizzo dei dati analitici e dell’indice di qualità biologica del suolo (QBS-ar). È prevista anche una parte pratica in campo con la descrizione di un profilo di suolo. La giornata è ospitata dall’azienda agricola “Al Confin” di Camisano Vicentino (Vi).
Il progetto AGROMIX, in cui il seminario rientra, riunisce agricoltori, ricercatori e responsabili politici per esplorare soluzioni agro-ecologiche per un uso più resiliente del suolo in Europa, attraverso lo sviluppo di pratiche rigenerative.
Il programma dettagliato su Veneto Agricoltura: https://bit.ly/3Q56Lxn
Mixed agriculture and agroforestry could help the transition to more climate-proof ways of farming. But how can farmers implement this effectively? Researchers at Wageningen University & Research and their European colleagues are letting farmers all over Europe experiment with climate-smart combinations of livestock, trees and crops.
